Paper short abstract:

In this paper we examine the potential of animation film as a way of representing and interpreting non verbal (sensorial) texts produced by participants, from within their aesthetic space. Using excerpts from The Stitches Speak (2009) we discuss how the collaboration between the film maker and participants leads to the production of tactile experience.

Paper long abstract:

The 'Animated ethnography' -The Stitches Speak, offers a space where the aesthetics of the participants are brought together with their narratives to construct an identity (Marks, 2000; Pink, 2009). The women artists from Kutch recall their memories of migration and loss, belonging and celebration not only through words but also through their narrative embroidery and appliqué. The language of stitches and the narrative depiction enfolds a worldview that is spatial and sensorial. The film maker-ethnographer is invited to travel within the fabric to experience the narrative. In this sharing, two moments in time are visited. One, when they recall the moment of the event, and the other of revisiting the event in cloth, transforming the event into material (Deleuze, 1992; Ranciere, 2007). The unfolding of the narrative is verbal, visual and tactile. In the process of 'telling', the multiple pasts and present converge into an experience which is mimicked by the film as a journey in the animated form, the film maker collaborating with the artists-participants (no longer subjects), to create meaning frame by frame, or stitch by stitch, re-transforming the material into event. The film then is not only a participatory method of reporting fieldwork; it also interprets the sensorial experience through cinematic means, lending its temporality to the space of the artefact. In this paper we discuss the potential of animation film as a way of representing and interpreting non verbal (sensorial) texts produced by participants, from within their aesthetic space.